Ex-worker Accuses Gop Of Bias

The Florida Party Discriminated Against Her Because She Is Black, She Says.

August 24, 2004|By Tamara Lytle, Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- A black woman charged Florida's Republican Party on Monday with discriminating against her, based on race, and then firing her when she complained.

Nadia Naffe, 25, of Tampa was a field director for the state party from August 2003 until she was fired April 2, after she complained to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to a lawsuit she filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Florida.

"When I went to work for them I was so disappointed in the things that I saw," said Naffe, who cried during parts of a news conference Monday at the National Press Club. Naffe, former head of the campus GOP group at the University of Tampa, is unemployed now.

"The things they would say, they were so ugly, and they would do it right in my face. . . . It was humiliating," she said.

Naffe said the state party required her to do outreach to black groups, which the lawsuit describes as illegal "race matching." Employees there also created a hostile work environment by making racially insensitive remarks, such as calling black people "ignorant," she said.

After she took her complaints all the way to state party Chairwoman Carole Jean Jordan, party officials fired her in retaliation, the suit said.

Party spokesman Joseph Agostini denied the charges but would not comment on specifics.

"Allegations are simply that -- allegations," he said. "We believe that once the process takes its due course, these allegations will prove to be without substance."

Naffe's suit, filed by two high-profile law firms, also blamed the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, saying those groups were involved with the financing and supervision of her position.

"We stand before you as not as Democrats and Republicans but as democrats, small `d,' and republicans, small `r.' Citizens should be able to participate in democracy free of bias," said attorney Cyrus Mehri, a frequent contributor to Democratic candidates. Mehri said the suit is being filed now because of statute-of-limitations requirements, not to score political points against Republicans a few months before elections.

Mehri, whose legal victories include race-discrimination cases against Coca-Cola and Texaco, called on President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to settle the case.

Naffe also is represented by Charles Burr and Sam J. Smith of Tampa, who accused the Adam's Mark hotels of discrimination against black students during Daytona Beach's Black College Reunion in 1999.